Before installing the Programming Resources component, verify that the Smart 3D software is installed on the workstation computer. For specific installation guidelines, see Smart 3D Workstation Recommendations.
Approximately 620 MB of hard disk space is required to perform a complete installation of the Programming Resources component. Before proceeding, verify that enough disk space is available on the workstation computer.
Refer to Install Smart 3D Client Software for setup instructions.
The Microsoft Help Viewer is the latest integrated system in which to display help
documentation for Visual Studio 2013 and later. We recommend that you complete Visual
Studio configuration for the help display before installing Programming Resources.
Refer to Setting the Help display in Visual Studio below for instructions.
The Programming Resources component provides developers with the tools necessary to customize the software by creating custom commands or custom programs. Before attempting to create commands or programs, you should be very familiar with Smart 3D interactively and understand its basic concepts of Projects, engineering, architecture, concurrency, and datastores, including the following:
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Microsoft Visual Basic (6.0 or later) at an advanced level, developing client and server systems and interfaces, and using Automation (C++ is not a requirement). Although any COM-compliant development platform can be used to interact with the software, Visual Basic is the preferred language because of its simplicity.
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Unified Modeling Language® (UML)®. UML is a popular method used to represent object-oriented data models. A brief overview of UML describes its relationship to the Smart 3D data model.
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Basic understanding of Smart 3D functionality. If you want to develop a command that performs placement of a vessel, you need to understand how to place the vessel interactively by using the software.
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Architecture. Smart 3D software has an architecture that is component-oriented and built on three tiers.
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Basic understanding of relational databases. Making the software task-oriented, Smart 3D uses one datastore.
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Engineering and project knowledge.
The default installation of the Programming Resources component includes online documentation, sample code, and installation wizards that add tools to Visual Basic menus to help make commands. The following features are available with the Programming Resources component:
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Command Wizard - Provides tools and methods for a new Visual Basic project and build a basic command based on those selected requirements.
For more specific information about creating commands using the Smart 3D application programming interface (API), contact Intergraph Support.
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Symbol Wizard - Creates and customizes three-dimensional symbols that fit your company or project. The wizard produces a Visual Basic project for building the symbol ports and graphics, and generates an Excel workbook for bulk-loading the symbol data into the Catalog database. Included with the Symbol Wizard, is a Visual Basic add-in called the Equipment Symbol Upgrade Wizard. This wizard allows you to upgrade Smart 3D version 5.0 Equipment symbols to Smart Occurrence-based equipment symbols.
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References Helper - Locates and references type libraries quickly and easily. The ability to reference a type library with this tool saves valuable time otherwise required when searching via Project > References in your Visual Basic project.
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Programming Help - Installs the Programming Help online documentation on the local computer.
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Example Code - Provides source code necessary for creating custom Visual Basic commands for Smart 3D. Also includes source code for customizing Visual Basic reference data rules and symbols. These rules are bulkloaded into the catalog.
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Debug Code for Task Host - Runs your Smart 3D Visual Basic project in debug mode.
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.NET Programming - Installs .NET Microsoft Visual Studio integrated programming help and examples.
In order to display the .NET documentation delivered with .NET Programming, you must use the Visual Studio Help Library Manager to configure the Microsoft Help
Viewer.
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3D Schema Browser - Displays the metadata and the relationships in the software.
Setting the Help display in Visual Studio
The Microsoft Help Viewer implementation provides two options for displaying programming documentation. The default setting is to display online documentation from a website. To display local programming documentation installed on your computer, you must set the viewer for local help. This allows you to use F1 and display installed Microsoft and Intergraph .NET programming documentation.
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Open Visual Studio.
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Click Help > Manage Help Settings to open the Help Library Manager.
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Select Choose online or local help.
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Select I want to use local help.
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Click OK.
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Click Exit to close the Help Library Manager.
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Close Visual Studio.
For more information about using the Microsoft Help Viewer, see InstallationMSHelpViewerdocs delivered with the Smart 3D .NET Programmer’s Guide in [Product Install]\Smart3D\CommonApp\SOM\Doc.